


Make a Home, Invite You In

by torakowalski



Category: Blood-Smoke Series - Huff, Smoke Series - Tanya Huff
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 16:55:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torakowalski/pseuds/torakowalski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there is house-hunting, too much coffee and things going bump in the night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make a Home, Invite You In

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Key the Metal Idol (key)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/key/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Key! I hope you like your fic :) I was so happy to be assigned this prompt; it's the fandom I've sekritly been hoping to get since I started doing Yuletide.
> 
> With thanks to disarm_d for Canadian-picking and modus_irrealis for sharing her Vancouver knowledge.
> 
> Title from Frank Turner's _The Fastest Way Back Home_.

The entrance hall was dim, lit only by a single, unshaded bulb.  Shadows lurked on the edges of the tired pool of light and the wind smattered light rain against the long, uncurtained windows and rattled the door.  The atmosphere was awkward, expectant.  
   
Lee Nicholas jumped when his cell phone rang, thankfully interrupting the smalltalk he'd been trying to make with the tall, middle-aged woman waiting beside him.  
   
He checked the screen before accepting the call and let out a relieved sigh when he saw _Tony (cell)_ flash across it.  
   
"Hey," he answered. "You nearly here?"  He was pretty sure that he managed to keep all traces of impatience out of his voice.  
   
"Fuck, Lee, I'm really sorry." Tony was out of breath, his voice tight and guilty.  "There's no way I'm going to be able to get there in time."  
   
Lee rubbed the place between his eyebrows where a headache threatened to build.  "Look, if you've changed your mind-," he started to say.  
   
"I haven't," Tony interrupted quickly.  He sounded kind of desperate.  "Seriously, my mind has never been less changed.  I'm just really tied up right now."  
   
On Lee's left, the woman shifted her feet and lifted her eyebrows inquiringly when Lee caught her eye.  Lee flashed his most winning smile and she smiled back, obviously reassured.   
   
"Not literally, right?" Lee asked Tony quietly.  It never hurt to check.  He had no idea what Tony could be involved in at the moment, considering _Darkest Night_ wasn't shooting today, but if it involved bondage then Lee was going to object.  
   
Tony laughed shortly.  "Almost.  There are tentacles."  
   
"Ew." Lee shuddered.  He'd seen tentacle porn once in college and he was still scarred.  "So you're really not going to make it."  It wasn't a question.  Even if Tony dusted the whatever-it-was he was fighting right now, Lee suspected that tentacles had to mean slime and this was a nice area.  
   
"I'm really – fuck! Tentacle! – sorry."  
   
Lee sighed.  "It's fine," he said.  "Go save the world." He lowered his voice.  "Be careful, yeah?"  
   
He could almost hear Tony's easy shrug.  "I always am. I'll see you later.  Jesus, stop with the fucking tentacles already, I know you're there-."  Lee listened to Tony's grumbles until Tony remembered that he hadn't ended the call then he turned back to the woman beside him, their brand new realtor.  
   
"Is everything okay?" she asked, tucking her hair behind her ears and looking concerned.  
   
"Absolutely," Lee told her emphatically.  He didn't think she was the sort of person who was likely to go straight to _24H_ or some other rag and tell them that Lee Nicholas's boyfriend had stood him up on their first day of house hunting but Lee had learned over the past year that you could never be too careful.  He touched her shoulder, friendly and easy.  "So how many bedrooms did you say this place has?"  
   
The realtor let him turn her toward the interior of the house and Lee spent the next hour being shown fixtures and fittings and very carefully not thinking about the fact that, right at this moment, the guy he was considering buying this place with was off battling tentacles.   
   


***

  
   
The second time they arranged a viewing - an old-fashioned little house outside New Westminster, close to where Lee had grown up - Tony got a block away before he heard a weird hissing sound, followed it, found a basilisk-like-thing and got distracted.  
   
Lee didn't blame him, he just wished that supernatural shit could develop better timing.  
   


***

  
   
The third time, it was an orphaned baby not-quite-a-Sasquatch that was lost and frightened in a communal yard.  
   
The realtor gave Lee a _look_ this time when he explained that it would once again only be him doing the viewing.  Lee was fairly certain she thought he was making Tony up, regardless of the flurry of invasive, long-lens paparazzi photographs of the two of them that had hit all the local papers after Lee first came out.

"My partner works a lot," Lee told her, refusing to sound defensive.

She nodded easily. "This one has heated floors," she told him and Lee realised that she didn't actually give a shit about his domestic situation as long as she earned commission from him buying somewhere. It was strangely liberating and he made sure to pay attention to this apartment.  
   


***

  
   
"I think maybe the metaphysical beings of British Columbia don't want us to move in together," Tony said from where his head was pillowed on Lee's chest.  
   
"Nah, the metaphysical beings of BC just want it to stop raining," Lee told him, watching the wind lash rain against Tony's kitchen window.   
   
The fact that they could lie on Tony's futon and watch rain through his kitchen window was reason #948 why the two of them needed to find a new place to live as soon as possible. (Other reasons included: both their tenancies coming up for renewal around the same time, the stupidity of keeping up two homes when they hadn't deliberately spent a night apart in about five months, and, well, _wanting to_.)  
   
Tony shivered theatrically and pressed closer.  "Me, too," he said fervently.  He'd been shooting second unit work around downtown Vancouver in the rain today.  Lee had stupidly – and unofficially – stopped by to deliver coffee and gotten just as soaked as the crew.  For a while, Lee had wondered if either of them were ever going to get dry.  They'd found ways.  
   
They lay in silence for a while.  Lee was stroking his fingertips over Tony's bare skin, bumping his fingers over Tony's ribs, which were always just a little too close to the surface, although not as much as during the demon invasion; he had a better handle on his abilities these days.  (Magic: The Miracle Diet.)  
   
Tony sighed contentedly and drew a finger around and around Lee's nipple ring; Lee hitched out a breath and covered Tony's hand with his.  
   
"No?" Tony asked, lifting his head briefly to squint up at Lee.   
   
Lee squeezed Tony's fingers.  "In a minute," he said, because when it came to sex with Tony, he didn't think he'd ever actually say _no_.  He sat up on his elbows and looked down at Tony, feeling uncharacteristically hesitant.  "You know the place I looked at yesterday?"  
   
"The apartment with the heated floors?" Tony asked, rolling onto his stomach to give Lee his full attention.  He'd gotten really excited when Lee told him about them.  
   
"Yeah," Lee agreed.  "It's pretty nice."  It was fucking amazing.  Definitely the best place Lee had seen so far.  It was bright and airy, with big windows and wooden floors.  When Lee had stood in the middle of the big double living room and closed his eyes, it had felt right, like somewhere he and Tony could live for a long time.  Maybe with a cat; Lee liked cats.  
   
"Yeah?" Tony held up his left hand and called his laptop to him from the coffee table – his actual laptop, not the one Arra had left for him.  He opened it and pushed it over onto Lee's stomach.  "Show me."  
   
Lee opened up the browser and pulled up the apartment details.  He tapped on the row of thumbnail pictures.  "See here? The living area is massive and it's got these awesome views out over the Fraser. It's close to work but not so close that CB can call you in at three in the morning.  There's a movie theatre nearby and restaurants and bars.  It's closer to Amy's and about the same distance from Zev's.  It is further from Henry's but it's an easier drive and-."  
   
"Wow," Tony interrupted.  "You _really_ like it."  
   
Lee wrinkled his nose, embarrassed.  "It's okay," he admitted, aiming for nonchalant and knowing immediately that he'd missed it.  
   
Tony poked him in the side, blunt nails on Lee's bare skin.  "You like it." He pushed the laptop down onto the mattress and straddled Lee's hips in its place.  "C'mon."   
   
"I like the neighborhood," he said, refusing to admit anything more in case it turned out that Tony hated it when, if, he ever got around to viewing it.   
   
Tony rolled his eyes.  "You're so fucking stubborn," he said but it was affectionate.  It was also a definite case of the pot calling the kettle stubborn. He dragged his hand down Lee's chest and spread his fingers over Lee's abs, palm flat.  He leaned in close and kissed the point of Lee's jaw.  "I'll make an appointment so we can look at it tomorrow," he said, his breath blowing hot across Lee's mouth. "And if every Big Bad from all seven seasons of Buffy tries to stop me, I won't let them."  
   
Lee grinned.  His boyfriend was romantic in the weirdest ways.  "Season six doesn't really have a Big Bad," was all he said.  
   
"Dork," Tony said and kissed him lightly.  Lee laughed against his mouth, grabbed him by the hips and rolled them over onto the bed.  
   


***

  
   
The realtor – Kim – gave a double take when she saw both Lee and Tony climbing out of Lee's SUV to meet her.  They weren't even late, which was a miracle considering rush hour traffic.  
   
Lee had to resist the urge to grab Tony by the shoulders and present him to her with a _See? I didn't make him up!_ and a flourish.  
   
"Mr Foster," Kim said, holding out her hand, "It's good to meet you."  She didn't add the _at last_ but Tony still grimaced.  
   
"Yeah," he said, "Sorry.  Work has been crazy lately."  
   
Lee bumped their shoulders together.  "Want to come see the heated floors?" he asked, which actually sounded super-dirty, but apparently Tony was on his best behavior because he didn't even raise his eyebrows suggestively.  Lee winked to make up for it for him.  
   
Kim smiled genially, apparently completely missing their exchange.  "I'm so glad you've decided to view this one again," she told them, falling into step beside Tony as they walked into the lobby.  "The price the vendors are asking is a complete bargain."  
   
Just inside the building, there was a concierge seated behind a smart, marble topped counter.  He greeted them with a small nod but Tony still moved around to Lee's other side.  "Doormen don't like me," he muttered quietly.  
   
Lee pushed his hand under Tony's denim jacket and touched his back for a second.  "This one will," he promised.  
   
"Hm," Tony said but he managed not to shoot the concierge any more suspicious looks while they waited for the elevator.  
   


***

  
   
Lee lost Tony to Kim the moment they stepped into the apartment.  He hung back, letting her explain about skirting boards and light fittings and all sorts of things that Lee knew Tony could care less about, hoping that her enthusiasm would rub off onto him.  
   
While the two of them made their way down the hallway, Lee wandered back into the living room.  The rain had finally eased up and watery sunshine was filtering through the curtains and smattering flecks of light across the pale wood floor.  
   
Lee crossed to the window and carefully took the net curtains down.  Sunlight burst across the room, chasing away spare shadows.  Lee grinned.  
   
"Holy fuck," Lee heard, Tony's voice carrying down the hallway. "Lee, have you seen the size of this bathroom?"  
   
"There are two like that," Lee shouted back.  
   
Tony's yelp and Kim's laugh echoed back to him.  
   
Lee was still in the living room, looking out at the view when Tony found him.  He stepped up behind Lee and put his hands on Lee's hips, resting his forehead against the back of Lee's neck.  "Just admit that you want to live here," Tony said.  
   
Lee twisted around so he could meet Tony's eyes.  "If you do," he said. In truth, he liked it even more now that he'd seen Tony standing in it.  It definitely felt like the right place for them.  
   
Tony walked around Lee, perching on the window sill and looking down into the courtyard.  He was quiet for long enough that Lee started to get worried.  Then he grinned.  "It's awesome," he said, "I really like it."  
   
Something anxious unclenched in Lee's belly and muscles relaxed that he hadn't even realised were tense.  "Shit," he laughed, "Really?"  
   
Tony tipped his smile up at Lee.  He was sun-soaked, washing out of his pale blue eyes and turning them silver, setting his hair aglow.  Every now and then, Lee got hit with this fierce wave of love that made his breath catch and his smile go stupid. He had a suspicion that this was one of those times.  
   
Tony's hand wrapped around Lee's wrist, fingers sliding under his titanium watch strap to pull him closer.  "Can we afford this?" he asked quietly.  
   
They were working to a budget.  It was a budget that had been carefully worked out in between rounds of Halo and sex one weekend a couple of months ago.  Lee was doing well at the moment with _Darkest Night_ entering its third season, a decent-sized role in a movie that might actually make it to movie theatres and a recurring guest spot on _Eureka_, but that was all academic because Tony wasn't moving in anywhere unless he could afford to pay for half of everything.  
   
"We can," Lee assured him.  Tony raised both eyebrows skeptically but Lee didn't cave.  "We _can_."  They could.  "You heard Kim, it's a bargain." He didn't know why it was so cheap and he didn't care, if the previous owners were crazy enough to sell a gorgeous place like this on the cheap, Lee was fully prepared to take advantage of it.  
   


***

  
   
They moved in on a Sunday, because both the metaphysical and CB liked to rest on Sundays.  Between them they managed to recruit Amy, Zev, Jack Elson and Mason to help them schlep everything over from their apartments.   
   
(Well, Mason was _there_; he wouldn't carry anything heavier than a pillow, so Lee wasn't sure he could really be counted as helping.)  
   
Lee's mom also arrived to lend a hand, directing proceedings with an efficiency that Peter would have envied and Tony was clearly planning to copy, judging from the awed look on his face.   
   
Moving two apartments into one wasn't quite as difficult as it sounded because half of Tony's furniture fell apart when they tried to lift it.  "Oops?" Tony said, biting his lip around an _aw, shucks_ grin.  "Yeah, I think most of my shit is held together with duct tape."  
   
They threw away Tony's milk-crate table, his DVD cabinet (which literally _was_ held together with duct tape) and the closet that was less a closet and more a slab of plywood propped up in front of a couple of costume racks that he had clearly 'permanently borrowed' from CB Productions.  
   
After some discussion, they decided to keep Tony's futon because Lee had fond memories of the nights they'd spent on it, back at the start, when going back to Lee's had risked way too many questions and going out together could lead to photographs from bored and desperate paparazzi.  Lee really wasn't sorry to be done with all that, with the scared, closeted part of his life.  
   
Lee's mom stole Tony about two hours into activities, just when everyone was starting to have an opinion on what should go where.  She shut the two of them in the kitchen and Lee was fairly certain that he did not want to know what she wanted privacy to talk to Tony about.   
   
"Maybe she's telling him to run while he still has the chance," Amy murmured in Lee's ear.   
   
Lee jumped and determinedly stopped staring in the direction of the kitchen.  "What?"  
   
"Nothing." Amy smiled sweetly at him.  "Or maybe they're having a torrid affair."  
   
Lee laughed, whatever it was that he'd been worried about melting away.  "Yes," he said, "That's probably it."  
   
Amy gave him a shove in the small of his back.  "Go and rescue him.  No one wants to spend that much quality time with their mother-in-law."  
   
Lee only did as she suggested because it was better than staying here and discovering that Mason and Jack had differing and vocal opinions on the angle the sofa should be set against the wall, and not at all because he was embarrassed by the implication of the term 'mother-in-law'.  
   
The door leading through the living room into the kitchen was a warm, shiny pine and looked like no one had tried to close it before.   
   
It swung open while Lee was still contemplating it.  
   
Lee's mom pressed a hand to her chest.  "Lee! For heaven's sake you nearly gave me a heart attack."  She laughed over her shoulder at Tony.  "What did I tell you? I said he couldn't let me have more than ten minutes with you."  
   
She smiled fondly at Lee and patted him on the arm on her way out the kitchen. She'd been confused when he'd first told her about Tony, confused and teary, but she'd been great since she'd gotten over the shock and she was definitely happier with him now than she'd been when he was taking out a different girl every month.

Lee pulled the kitchen door to behind him.  It really was far too nice a kitchen for the two of them, considering that it took both him and Tony together about three hours to successfully cook anything more technical than a Kraft dinner.   
   
"Hey," Lee said, coming and leaning up against the counter next to Tony.  
   
Tony smirked at him sideways.  "Don't tell me you missed me," he said.  
   
Lee shrugged.  "Nah," he assured him. "Just hiding from Mason."   
   
Tony nodded.  "Makes sense."  
   
They stood in companionable silence for a while, just enjoying the quiet and the time to stand still.  "So what did Mom want?" Lee had to ask eventually.  It wasn't that he was nosy, he just… liked to be involved in what was going on.  
   
Tony made a dismissive noise and shook his head.  His cheeks flushed along the bone and right across the bridge of his nose.  "Nothing," he said, "Just to chat or whatever."  
   
Lee wanted to press for more information but he didn't. From the moment that Lee's mom had found out that Tony had no parents – or at least none that counted or deserved him – she'd been trying to mother him.  Sometimes Tony even let her.  
   
Tony ducked his head, scuffing the heel of one battered Chuck against the bottom of a cupboard door.  
   
"So," Lee said, dragging out the word until Tony looked up.  Lee looked around for some way to change the subject.  "We still have to find somewhere for all the shit my family's given us. I mean, what are we even going to do with the-." Lee waved a hand towards the box sitting on the counter behind Tony, the one that contained the… thingy, the white and metal thingy that cut stuff… shit.  "The-.  The thing from The OC. The cat guillotine thing."  
   
Tony stared at him.  The usual guilty look he got when Lee lost words replaced by disbelief. At least he wasn't blushing and uncomfortable any more.  "Cat guillotine?" he repeated slowly then, "The bagel slicer?"  
   
_Yes_. "Yes!"  The word slotted in with the picture in Lee's brain.  "That."  
   
Tony snorted. "You are so weird. How did I not know you were this weird before I agreed to move in with you?"  
   
Lee smiled slowly.  "I've kept it well hidden," he said, taking a step closer to Tony, crowding him a little.  
   
Tony let himself be walked backwards and only raised his eyebrows when his back hit the refrigerator cabinet.  "Not _that_ well," he said, winding his arms around Lee's neck.  
   
Lee was fairly certain that kissing Tony right now was going to positively reinforce all kinds of unfortunate things, like calling Lee weird in his own (_their_ own) home, and – mm, okay, Lee didn't give a fuck because Tony was kissing his jaw, his chin, his mouth, and Tony could call him whatever he liked as long as he kept that up.   
   
Lee touched his tongue to Tony's bottom lip and Tony open his mouth a little, providing just enough space for Lee to slip his tongue inside, touch the smooth hot place between Tony's top lip and teeth, slide their tongues together.  
   
One of Tony's arms tightened around Lee's neck and the other dropped down, palm smoothing along Lee's spine until his hand could slide into Lee's back pocket.  
   
Lee pressed forward, letting his knee slip between Tony's thighs even though, fuck, they shouldn't be doing this right now; they had guests and Lee's _mother_ was only a couple of rooms away.  
   
Tony sighed, a soft, contented sound that reverberated between their chests where they were touching and vibrated around Lee's tongue.  He moved his mouth away from Lee's and dragged his damp lips along Lee's cheek to his ear.  "You're okay with the fact that we have to christen every room in this apartment, right?" he asked.  
   
Lee shivered.  "I am absolutely fucking fine-" _with that_ was supposed to be the end of the sentence but Lee was interrupted by a startled cough from the doorway.  
   
"Oh my god, my eyes," Jack groaned.  
   
"Never mind Jack's eyes," Zev said immediately, coming up behind Jack and clearly laughing at them all, "Feel free to continue. Some of us would not object."  
   
Tony pushed Lee away with a hand in the centre of his chest and glared from Zev to Jack and back again.  "Perverts," he said, squeezing past Zev and out into the living room.  
   
Lee followed Tony, leaving poor Jack to splutter some kind of denial to the empty kitchen.  
   


***

  
   
By the end of the day, they'd managed to put all their furniture into roughly the right rooms, half their stuff was unpacked and the other half was living in boxes scattered throughout the apartment with a view to sorting them out at some point.  Some point when they weren't trying to save the world or film a TV show, so it would probably take about a decade.  
   
Their merry band of workers had turned not so merry around six p.m. so Lee had dug into his pockets and ordered pizza for everyone, which turned into pizza and beer which turned into his mom shaking her head and commenting loudly on the nutritional advantages of _fruits_ and _vegetables_ and other things that either Lee or Tony was probably going to have to shop for eventually.  
   
Not right now though.  The last person had left, the door was locked, the lights were shining brightly on their brand new home and Lee was pushing Tony down onto the sofa.  
   
"Don't tell me," Tony said, laughing up at him, "Dust bunnies get you hot?"  
   
Lee pressed his face into Tony's shoulder which, yeah, smelt of dust and cardboard boxes.  "Yeah," he said, "I've been trying to hide it but I just have to be true to myself."  
   
He shoved his hands up under Tony's t-shirt and edged it up toward his armpits.  
   
"Dork," Tony said and twisted, pulling his t-shirt all the way off and dropping it on Lee's head.  
   
Lee shook his eyes free and let go of Tony just long enough to knock the t-shirt onto the floor.  "Punk," he admonished and leaned in to kiss Tony.  
   
Tony pulled him down to deepen the kiss.  He tasted like pizza and coffee, two great flavours that really should not taste great together, which didn't, in fact, unless Lee happened to be tasting them on Tony's tongue.  
   
"Hey, remember where we'd gotten to earlier?" Tony asked, spreading his thighs enough for Lee's knee to fall between them.   
   
"Vaguely," Lee told him, earning himself a tug on his hair and then a moan when he pushed his thigh up, feeling Tony's cock thicken against him.  
   
There was plenty of room to manoeuvre on the wide, three-seater sofa, but it was overly padded, leather, and it was impossible not to give into the gravity that pulled them both toward the back cushions.   
   
Tony braced his foot and pushed up, just enough to force their hips together for a long, languid press.   
   
"Shit," Lee groaned, dropping his head.  His jeans were too tight and his belt was digging into his stomach.  He reached down to undo or untuck something and met Tony's hands already there.  "Thanks," he said and concentrated on tugging Tony's sweatpants down his hips while Tony unbuckled Lee's belt and unzipped his fly.  
   
Freed, Lee's hard-on dropped forward into the exposed V of his boxers and Tony moulded his hand to it, squeezing.  
   
Lee swore and pressed down into the touch.  There was a time for slow, polished, romantic sex and then there were times, like right now, that were made purely for rushed, messy handjobs on the sofa.   
   
Lee had just gotten his hand on Tony in return when the sound of Tony's cell phone ringing broke both the air and the mood.  
   
"Oh, _fuck_," Tony swore.  He hesitated for a long second then groaned and pushed awkwardly at Lee until he could lean down and grab his cell phone from the floor.  Lee half sat up, palming his cock apologetically and watching the haze start to fade from Tony's eyes as he came back to reality.  There'd been no question that Tony wouldn't answer his phone; a wizard was always on call.  
   
"Hello?" Tony asked, rolling onto his back and staring up at the ceiling.  "Oh, hey."  _It's Henry_, he mouthed to Lee, with a look like he was thinking about asking Lee to carry on with what he'd been doing.  Lee shook his head.  He was _not_ jerking Tony off while Henry was on the phone; Henry would know, Lee was sure of it.  
   
Tony grinned sharply at something Henry said.  "Yeah," he said, "We're all moved in.  You should come by sometime and see for yourself."  He raised his eyebrows at Lee like an afterthought and Lee had to grit his teeth before he could nod his agreement.  He'd known getting into this that Henry was the kind of ex who hung around, but he hadn't known for a couple of months after that that Henry had an actual like, _species imperative_ to stay involved in Tony's life.  
   
Most of the time, Lee didn't mind.  Emphasis on _most_ of the time.   
   
"What?" Tony was saying.  "Oh.  Oh, yeah, I've put the wards up."  He glanced guiltily toward their locked, but so-far completely unwarded front door.  "No, they _are_."  He rolled his eyes.  "Yes, Henry.  Three bags full, Henry.  Yeah, okay, I'll see you.  Bye."  
   
He hung up and dropped the phone on the sofa next to Lee's knee.  "Sorry about that, where were we?" He tried to pull Lee back down, but Lee stopped him with a (very regretful) hand against his shoulder.  "Wards?" he said.  
   
Tony sighed.  "Wards," he agreed, stealing one last kiss before he stood up and fumbled his pants up.  "Damn it.  It's even worse when Henry's _right_, you know?"  
   
Lee didn't know; he'd never belonged to a four hundred year old vampire.  He made his money playing a guy who did though, so he just said, "Yeah."  
   


***

  
   
Lee woke in the middle of the night, goosebumps shivering up across his bare arms, back and legs.  "It's cold," he protested, half asleep and trying to roll up against Tony, planning to steal his body heat.  
   
"Yeah," Tony said, propping himself up on his elbows, "That's because the comforter is across the room."  
   
Lee frowned, his brain too foggy with sleep to work that out.  "Why?"  
   
Tony shrugged.  "Hell if I know," he said and held out his left palm, using the come to me to bring the comforter back across them.   
   
"Handy," Lee said and pressed his face into Tony's pillow.  
   
In the morning, he barely remembered waking up.  
   


***

  
   
Lee was busy at work currently.  They had one and a half episodes of season three in the can and James Taylor Grant was _finally_ getting a genuine character arc.  Lee was ecstatic.  
   
He was also on set every union-approved hour god sent.   
   
Meanwhile, Tony was working second unit for the next few days so he was already home by the time Lee got there some days.  When Lee unlocked the front door after a particularly long day, the scent of cherries was strong in the air. He sniffed, frowning and checking the wards around the door as though he'd be able to tell if something were wrong.  
   
"Tony?" he called.  
   
"Yo!" Tony answered from the direction of the living room.  He didn't sound like he'd been savaged by any minion of evil, so that was good.  
   
"Did something try to get in?" Lee asked, hanging up his jacket behind the door and walking towards Tony's voice.  
   
"What?" Tony asked.  "Oh, the wards?  No, but half of them of them were smudged when I got home.  You didn't walk into them or anything this morning, did you?"  
   
Lee stopped in the living room doorway and looked down at his jeans.  "Don't think so," he said, checking for stray sticky, pink-ish smudges.   
   
Tony was lying on his side on the sofa, watching a movie and ignoring the boxes scattered around the room that still needed to be unpacked.  He shrugged.  "Must have been me then."  
   
Lee kicked off his shoes and crawled over Tony to lie between him and the back of the sofa.  He stuck his cold hands against Tony's warm back, making his grunt.  "Hi."  
   
Tony rubbed his bare foot down Lee's shin, the ball of his foot brushing Lee's ankle bone.  "Hey."  He reached forward and picked a bowl of tortilla chips off the coffee table. "Want anything? We have all good food groups.  Chips?" He rested them on his hip so Lee could reach.  "Beer?"  
   
"Yeah," Lee said, beer sounded good. "I'll get it."  Tony was incredibly warm and, after riding his bike through the chilly, damp December streets, Lee didn't want to move away.  
   
"No, hang on," Tony said and held up his left hand.  The kitchen door was open and the fridge was in his line of sight but still.  
   
"Fridge door's closed," Lee pointed out.  
   
"Shh," Tony hissed.  He closed his eyes, probably picturing the inside of the fridge – hopefully not paying too much attention to the cheese that had somehow managed to go mouldy in like, three days and was now forming an independent colony in the egg rack.  
   
Lee pressed his chin into Tony's shoulder, watching the fridge door with him.  He was genuinely impressed when the door swung open jerkily and a bottle of beer waited for a clear flight path before flying out, crossing the living room and settling into Tony's hand.  
   
"Oh fuck yeah!" Tony said, pumping the arm that held the beer into the air.  "Who's the man?"  
   
Lee grabbed the bottle away from him.  "You are," he agreed.  "Now you've just got to get it to shut again."  
   
"Hmph," Tony said, "Fuck."  He rolled off the sofa and padded on bare feet to the kitchen.  His come to me's were pretty much infallible but no matter how much effort he put into working on the reverse spell, he hadn't quite gotten it worked out yet.  
   
Lee drained half his beer while Tony was gone and glanced over at the movie paused on the TV.  It was some black and white one that Lee didn't know - or rather that Lee didn't know _yet_ because it was impossible to watch a movie with Tony and not learn everything there was to know about it by the end. He was like a walking, talking IMDB.  
   
"What are we watching?" Lee asked when Tony returned carrying four more beers, which he set down on the table before coming to spoon up in front of Lee again.  Lee rescued the tortilla chips out from under Tony's leg before they could get crushed.  
   
Tony tipped his head back to give Lee his patented _where have you_ been_? You're so lucky you met me_ look.  "It's the Third Man," he said, "Tell me you've seen it."  
   
"Oh," Lee said, "Yeah.  Once maybe in college."  His then-girlfriend had dragged him to a classic movie night at the campus movie theatre; Lee was pretty sure they'd spent at least ninety percent of the movies necking, but he wasn't going to volunteer _that_ information to Tony.  
   
Tony sighed and Lee grinned, settling down more comfortably, prepared to be educated.  
   


***

  
   
After three beers, Lee was all set to sleep deeply and awkwardly and probably wake up with a crick in his neck.  He'd hit twenty-seven this year and unexpectedly stopped being able to fall asleep in whatever position he liked and still wake up pain free in the morning.  Tonight though he probably would have slept the whole night through if it hadn't been for one of the freakiest dreams he could remember having.  
   
One minute, he was deep asleep, the next something cold and wet that his hindbrain told him was _hand_ pressed against his cheek.  
   
Lee woke up with a start, his hand flying to his face.  There was nothing there and he drew in a relieved breath, flopping back down onto the mattress.  He rubbed his cheek against his pillow a few times to dispel the lingering sensory memory and shivered.  Fuck, but that was a random kind of nightmare for him to have had.  Usually, when he had shitty dreams, they were about the house and what had happened there - he wasn't sure how he felt about his subconscious inventing _new_ horrors to freak him out with.  
   
Tony was stretched out on his own side of the bed, snoring softly and Lee was tempted to nudge him awake except what would be the point?  Tony was Lee's boyfriend not his mom; he didn't need to know when Lee had had a bad dream.  
   
A _weird_, bad dream, Lee thought, pulling the comforter up to eye-level before closing his eyes to go back to sleep.  
   


***

  
   
Their first fortnight in their new apartment passed in a haze of christening as many rooms as possible (sometimes twice and, in the case of the bathrooms and bedroom, _way more_ than twice) and not really getting anywhere with their unpacking.  
   
Lee forgot about the nightmare and, anyway, thought he was too busy for any more until the next time that he had exactly the same creepy nightmare as before.  
   
Cold, damp fingers stroked his cheekbone and curled briefly under his jaw this time and he couldn't hold back his noise of protest before his eyes snapped open and he realised that it had been another fucking dream.  
   
He rubbed his palm over his jaw and maybe, just maybe he could convince himself that the skin there was colder than it should be-. No, it had been a dream and he was projecting.  
   
Lee rolled onto his side, facing Tony and found his hands under the blanket, picking them up and squeezing them, checking, but they were warm and dry and definitely hadn't been groping at his face a minute ago.  
   
"Wrghf?" Tony asked, still asleep.  
   
"Nothing," Lee told him, "Weird dream."  
   
Tony's eyes slitted open. "'kay?" he mumbled.  
   
Lee forced himself to smile even though Tony couldn't see it in the dark; it helped to make his performance more convincing when he said, "Absolutely.  Go back to sleep."  
   
"Mm," Tony said and did. It took Lee much longer.  
   


***

  
   
An apartment shared by two guys in their mid-twenties was only going to stay so tidy, so it was a miracle that they didn't misplace more stuff than they did. Right now, Tony was running late and his sides for this morning weren't where he was expecting them to be so the apartment was getting significantly messier while he tore it apart in his search.  
   
"Woah," Lee said, leaning against the laundry hamper which Tony was currently dangling upside-down inside, raking through the tangle of their dirty jeans.  "They're not going to be in there."  
   
Tony stood up, his face flushed and his hair a mess. "Well they're not anywhere else," he said, waving a hand like he really, really wanted to try calling the sides to him but couldn't without knowing where they were.  "Are you sure you haven't-."  
   
"I haven't moved them," Lee told him, "Why would I have? I'm not even in them." He stopped, realising exactly how that sounded. "Um, not that I'm not completely interested in everything that happens in the show whether or not I'm involved."  
   
Tony laughed suddenly, dissolving the almost-tension of the almost-argument that had been building.  "Sure you are," he said.  "_Mason_."  
   
Lee let out a gasp, clutching a hand over his heart.  "Harsh," he laughed.  He picked Tony's backpack up from the floor and put it on the counter, probably risking tetanus from the random crap accumulated inside it.  "Are you sure they're not-." He stopped, pulling out a handful of blue sheets of paper. "Tony, they're right here."  
   
Tony blinked at him.  "But I looked there," he said faintly, rubbing the back of his head.   
   
Lee shook his head, pushing the bag across the counter toward Tony.  "Senility is a sad, sad thing," he teased.  
   
Tony flipped him off, a smile pushing its way onto his face, but there was still a little line between his eyes, growing as he stared at his bag in confusion. 

"That is so weird." He shoved everything back into his backpack, asking, "What are you doing with yourself today?" as he did so.   
   
Lee shrugged.  Episode three was all about Raymond Dark's backstory so Lee had today off.  "I thought I'd take my bike out," he said, watching Tony continue to glare at his bag with suspicion.  "You okay?"  
   
"What?" Tony said, then, "Yeah.  Sure." He grabbed his bag by one strap and swung it over his shoulder.  "I've gotta go.  Don't crash your bike, yeah?"  
   
Lee waved him off. He'd had his bike for a decade and he hadn't crashed it yet. He turned around, trying to remember where he'd left the keys.  They were in the shallow dish by the door, which he was sure was _not_ where he'd left them, but whatever, not-lost was way better than lost.  
   


***

  
   
There was something heavy pressing down on Lee's chest, cutting off his air.  Half asleep, he still knew this wasn't right. He tried to move but couldn't.  He tried to drag in a breath to make a sound, call for help, but couldn't.   
   
Panic zipped around his body, buzzing in his ears and he managed to twitch his arms, just a little, just enough and suddenly the weight was gone.  Lee rolled onto his side, gasping in air.  The hand he braced on the mattress for support was shaking and so were his knees when he sat up.   
   
He reached out blindly for the bedside lamp, turning around quickly when light filled the room.  He didn't know what he was looking for and he didn't find it.  The room looked the same, looked exactly like it should.  Lee pressed a hand to his chest and rubbed it, drawing in breath after shaky breath until his breathing steadied.  
   
The other side of the bed was empty and Lee shot to his feet, walking quickly across the room on legs that were not quite steady.   
   
"Tony?" he called and tried to pull open the bedroom door.  There was a second's dread when he thought the door wouldn't open, that he was trapped, then he remembered that the door pushed not pulled and he stumbled out into the hall, feeling stupid and on-edge.  "Tony!"  
   
Silence.   
   
Lee turned on every light between the bedroom and front door.  The light on the answerphone was blinking and Tony's voice sounded bright and easy, cheerful, through the stifling air of Lee's panic.   
   
"Hey!  Henry just called about a thing with a Cracken.  Yeah, seriously. So I'm going to head over there on my way home.  Don't wait up. Although judging from the fact I got the answerphone, you're probably already in bed.  Slacker.  I'll see you later.  Oh and we should think about putting an actual message on this thing.  Beeeeep is pretty uninspiring, dude."  
   
About half way through the message, Lee had slumped back against the nearest the wall, relieved to know where Tony was even if he had no idea what else was going on.  The memory of panic was still lodged in his chest, but the longer he was awake, the less convinced he was that it hadn't been a dream, the world's worst and freakiest dream sure, but maybe still just a dream.  
   
Except.   
   
Except he knew it hadn't been.  
   
He turned his head to look at the front door.  The wards were a pale, almost invisible, pink smudge and they looked fine to Lee's amateur eye.  But still, something was wrong. He couldn't stop remembering that recurring dream of someone touching his face; if something really had been pressing down on his chest tonight then it could well have been real those other nights too. Fuck.  
   
Unconsciously keeping his back to the wall, Lee reached over and pressed his hand to the frame around the front door.  If he concentrated hard enough, he could feel the tiniest hum of warmth but he had no idea if the wards were saying _hey, we're working great and you're a paranoid idiot_ or if they were saying _alert! alert! There's something creepy in your apartment! Where the fuck is the wizard?!_.   
   
Lee stepped back from the door and sighed. His chest still ached dully.  Frowning, Lee pulled his t-shirt down at the collar and looked down.  There was a bright red bruise on his sternum, about the size of a fist and easily visible through his chest hair.  
   
"Holy fuck," Lee whispered to himself.  Right, definitely not a dream then.  "Hello?" he called, raising his voice and trying to ignore the way it was shaking.  He didn't want to say _who's there_ but it was a cliché because it worked.  
   
There was no answer; Lee hadn't really expected there would be.  The last demons he'd come across hadn't exactly chatted with him and if it was some kind of ghost, he'd really rather not know.  
   
Crap, it was probably a ghost.  That made the most sense.  Presumably.  Shit, what the fuck did Lee know about this crap?  He was normally possessed or captured or some other fun thing by the time anyone worked out what exactly was going on.  
   
It was tempting to stay in the hallway and wait for Tony, but Lee wasn't going to let Tony come home and find him cowering from the boogeyman like the damsel in distress that he was so determined not to get type-cast as.  
   
"Okay," Lee said aloud. James Taylor Grant tackled shit like this head on, so could Lee. Stalking into the living room, he snapped.  "Ghost?  Demon?  Whatever? Show yourself."  
   
There was nothing, absolutely silence.  Lee felt his bravado start to flicker.  He turned around slowly; nothing moved or spoke up or seemed to notice him at all.   
   
Lee swallowed.  He wasn't cut out for this, he wasn't a hero, he just played one on TV and slept next to one at night.  
   
Not sure what else to do, but sure that he did not want to go back to bed, Lee decided the best plan was to wait up for Tony and hope they could think of some plan of action together.

He was reluctant to turn on the TV in case it disturbed the demon-ghost-whatever-thing, but, fuck it, this was his apartment. There was nothing on TV but just the sound of MTV humming quietly in the background helped Lee to breath easier.  Lee stared at the screen until his eyes crossed and when he looked away there were silver pixels dancing in front of his eyes, losing themselves in the moonlight streaming in through the window.  
   
Eyes watering with the force of a yawn, he thought he caught sight of movement in the corner of the room and he sat up straight, focusing on the darkest corner where the shadows were thickest.  The only things there were two half-height bookcases that they were using as a DVD cabinet and the few DVDs that Tony had gotten around to unpacking  
   
The DVDs were rearranging themselves of the shelf, one by one.   
   
Lee stopped breathing.  "Hello?" he choked out.  
   
Nothing.  
   
He stood up, moved toward the bookcases even though a warning voice in his head, one that sounded a lot like Tony, was reminding him that moving toward Creighton Caulfield was what had gotten him possessed last time.  
   
Lee swallowed, licked his lips, forced himself to ask, "Brenda?"  He knew it couldn't be Brenda, knew she'd gone into the light along with everyone else back at the house, but it was still a relief when she didn't suddenly materialise from the wall, all sharp smile and possessive hands.  
   
Lee looked up at the wall above the bookcase, looking for movement.  Instead, he saw a face and he let out a yell, backpedaling half way across the room before he realised that the face he'd seen was his own, reflected back at him in the framed _Tremors_ movie poster hanging on the wall.  He pressed his hands to his face, laughing shakily and maybe a little hysterically. Fuck, he was afraid of his own reflection now, could tonight get any worse?  
   
Before the universe had a chance to take him up on that particular challenge, the front door clicked open. Tony was in the living room doorway before Lee could unpeel himself from the wall that he'd backed up against.  
   
"Lee?" Tony sounded confused.  _Yeah,_ Lee thought, _Hi.  The person you just moved in with is going insane._  
   
Lee looked up.  Tony was coming towards him slowly, looking worried he might spook him. His hair was a wind-blown mess and his face was red from being outside. Lee wanted to touch. He knew it didn't make much sense considering most of Tony's heroics were pulled out of his ass at the last minute, but he'd always felt safe with Tony.   
   
Lee took in Tony's worried frown and couldn't find the words he needed to tell him what was going on.  "Fuck," he managed, feeling wrung-out.  It was enough to get Tony to close the distance between them.  
   
"You need to tell me what's going on," Tony told him in his best, _I'm the wizard, you can trust me_ voice.  Tony only used that voice when he had no idea what was happening or what he was supposed to do about it.  "If you're freaking out you need to tell me.  Also, if you're freaking out you have really shitty timing."  
   
"Shitty timing?" Lee echoed.  Was there a good time to freak out about things going bump in the night.  Then he realised what Tony meant, what Tony thought was going on.  "God, no," he said, "I'm not freaking out about-" _us_.  
   
"Because we just moved in together and-," Tony continued, not listening.  
   
"Tony."  Lee grabbed for Tony's hand, squeezed it.  Tony's skin was still cold, just starting to warm-up and Lee stroked a thumb over his knuckles.  "I'm not freaking out."  He was, he so totally was, but not like Tony meant.  
   
Tony tipped his head, not looking convinced.  "Something's going on though."  
   
Lee swallowed hard.  "Yeah."  
   
Tony shook Lee's hand slightly.  "What?"  
   
"I think there's a ghostintheapartment."  The last four words came out all together, blurred into one long sound.  _Enunciation_, Lee's old drama teacher whispered in his brain.  
   
"Okay," Tony said slowly, blinking.  "Mostly I'm worried because I understood that."  He rested his free hand on Lee's shoulder.  Their other hands hung between them.  "Start at the beginning?"  
   
So Lee told him about the weirdness, putting it all together himself as he did so. By the time he'd done, he had an idea of the timeline: their comforter ending up across the room in the middle of the night, the cold hand on Lee's face, the weight on his chest, the fact that shit kept going missing and turning up in the wrong place, the _moving DVDs_.  
   
Tony's eyes were wide when Lee was finished.  Lee refused to let himself fidget or to feel like a fool; it didn't sound that conclusive now he was saying it out loud but he knew what he'd seen and felt and he knew he was right. Besides, waking up in the night unable to breathe did a lot to convince a person that something was wrong.  
   
Tony seemed to think so too. "Fuck," he said, drawing the word out. "That's got to be a ghost. It doesn't sound like a demon."

"Yeah," Lee said. He had really been hoping Tony would have some wizardy inside information that would tell him it _wasn't_ a ghost. Lee knew it wasn't going to be like it was back at the house; the chance of there being two malevolent waxy residues in the Greater Vancouver area was incredibly low but the last one had killed Lee's sort-of-girlfriend, tried to kill Tony and used Lee's body for torture and orgasms.  Strangely, he'd much preferred dealing with demons to dealing with ghosts. "So what do we do?"

"We fix it," Tony told him certainly. "I mean, I fix it. It's what I do, remember?"

Normally, Lee would tease him for providing his own superhero tag line but, right now, Lee didn't feel like teasing.  "How?" he asked.  
   
Tony looked over at the (thankfully stationary) row of DVDs.  "Something is messing with my movie collection?" he asked.  "I'll find a way."  
   


***

  
   
Freaky situations meant a war council.  
   
Tony sat on the corner of Amy's desk and rapidly filled her and Zev in on everything Lee had told him last night.  Because he was a good guy, he managed to make Lee come off way cooler than Lee was sure he had been in real life.   
   
Mason was there too, lurking in the background like he didn't want to admit to being interested.  Or at least like he thought someone should have offered him a seat.   
   
"Ghosts," Amy said, leaning back in her chair and folding her hands across her stomach.  Her nails were cobalt chloride blue today like a walking science experiment.  "Haven't we done that one?"   
   
"This isn't a TV show," Tony told her, "Things can repeat."  
   
"No," Zev said, "I agree with Amy.  We didn't come off well against ghosts last time."  He shot a guilty look at Lee but didn't take it back.  Lee didn't blame him.  
   
"Yeah," Lee agreed.  He was sitting in Rachel's desk chair because even if she came back from wherever she'd gone, she liked him and probably wouldn't kill him.  "This one's in our apartment though; that's different."  
   
Tony shook his head.  "Not so much.  Henry's apartment had ghosts," he explained, clenching his hands until his knuckles went white.  "About a year after we moved to Vancouver."  
   
"Yeah?" Lee asked.  Tony hadn't mentioned that; he tended to feed out details of his pre-_Darkest Night_ life in bite-sized chunks.   
   
Tony shivered and didn't look at any of them.  "It was… not good."  His eyes looked far way.  Lee had to force himself not to reach out to touch him; he knew Tony wouldn't appreciate it just then.  
   
"How did you get rid of it?" Amy asked.  She'd dropped her teasing tone.  
   
Tony shrugged, playing with a rip in the sleeve of his sweatshirt.  "Henry and a friend – Vicki," he added, looking at Lee.  Lee nodded; he knew about Vicki Nelson. Meeting her and Mike Celluci via Skype had been the most terrifying meet-the-family of his life.  "They tracked down the person who murdered them."  
   
"Okay!" Amy suddenly looked much happier.  "Well, we can do _that_."  She looked around.  "Can't we?"  
   
"I guess it depends on when they were murdered," Zev said thoughtfully, "If it was a hundred years ago, that might be harder."  
   
"There are still ways," Mason said grandly, apparently unable to stay quiet any longer. Lee raised his eyebrow at him and Mason leaned forward.  "Trust me," he said sincerely, "I once guest starred in _Cold Case_."  _Yeah, mostly as a corpse_, Lee thought but didn't say because it wasn't Mason's fault that Lee hadn't slept since two a.m. and he was feeling cranky.  
   
"Right," Amy said slowly, "Thanks.  Tell you what, you guys get on set and _you_-." She pointed at Lee sternly.  "Get to make-up; you look like shit."  
   
"Thanks, Amy," Lee said sincerely, "I feel way better now."  
   
"You _should_."  The pointed finger waggled.  "Zev and I are going to be researching what murders have happened in and around your apartment."  
   
"We are?" Zev asked.  Her hand went toward her stapler and Zev paled.  Tony snorted a laugh.  Lee wondered what he was missing.  "We are."  
   


***

  
   
"Bad news," Amy told Lee when he paid her a visit at lunchtime.  He needed coffee and maybe a million Pixie Stix for lunch if he wanted to have any chance of getting through the rest of the day.

("Wizard shit or something I have to ream you out for?" Peter had asked Lee quietly when Lee had broken the second scene of the day by yawning.  Lee had just blinked at him and Peter had sighed.)  
   
"What?" Lee now asked warily.  He stole Rachel's chair again and released the back rest, lying as far back as he could and closing his eyes.  
   
"Your neighborhood may possibly be the most boring area in the whole of Canada.  No weird deaths, no unsolved murders, just really, really boring nothing."  
   
"Boring's good," Tony told her, coming into the office and stopping behind Lee's chair.  "Well, usually."  
   
"So what now?" Amy asked.   
   
"Leah," Lee said before Tony could say anything about solving this by himself, "And Henry."  He squinted up at Tony.  "Yeah?"  
   
Tony frowned but he nodded.  "Yeah," he said, "I guess."  
   


***

  
   
After work that day, Lee, Tony, Amy and Zev met Jack, Leah and Henry in the Tim Horton's down the block from CB Productions.  
   
"You spent hours in your apartment without wards?" Henry wasn't saying I told you so, but he looked like he wanted to.  His mineral water bottle was buckling under his grip, looking in immanent danger of imploding. "I would have thought that would have been your priority."  
   
Tony folded his arms.  He looked like a teenager getting told off by his dad which, given their past relationship, was an uncomfortable analogy that Lee was going to erase from his mind right now.  "I know, okay," Tony snapped.  "I forgot.  I fucked up.  Thank you for telling me, now can you just-?"  
   
"Guys," Lee said.  Henry's attention snapped to him and Lee felt a little bit of his soul curl up in the fetal position at the intensity in his gaze.  Shit.  "Look, the apartment went for a song, it was probably already haunted. And can we focus more on getting our apartment un-possessed and less on this pissing contest?"  
   
"I don't know," Leah said, pulling her little knitted cap off and shaking out her hair.  She was bundled up for winter but Lee wondered if she could even feel the cold. "I think they're funny when they get like this."  
   
Tony glared at her.  She smirked.  "Are you going to be helpful?" Tony asked her.  
   
"Oh, honey," Leah said, "I'm always helpful." The air around her seemed to sizzle and out of the corner of his eye, Lee saw Jack and Henry shift in the way that Lee also wanted to shift.  Amy and Zev rolled their eyes and Tony seemed to completely miss that it was happening at all.  
   
Tony sat back, talking to the group now.  "We need to work out exactly what we've got, how we got it, and how to get rid of it."  He frowned and looked up at the menu board above where the baristas were standing.  "Also we should order because we're getting funny looks."  
   
"I'll go," Zev said, standing up.  He pretended to pull a notebook out of his back pocket and licked the tip of an invisible pen.  "What does everyone want?"  
   
Everyone asked for something along the lines of hot and extra caffeinated, which probably said something really bad about them and their dietary habits but Lee was too busy looking forward to his extra large double double to care.  
   
"As for how you attracted the ghost in the first place," Leah said once Zev had handed her a towering mocha.  She licked cream from around her lips.  "I would have thought that would be obvious."  At their looks, she shook her head sadly.  "Tony, the more magic you do, the more obvious you are to spot.  Imagine that you're one of those energy saving light bulbs and the longer you're left on, the brighter you are."  
   
"At least I'm good for the environment," Tony muttered.  "But it's not me it's targeting, it's Lee."  
   
"Well Lee's just as bad," Leah said.  She held up a finger before Lee could object.  "Honestly, do you have any idea how tainted you are?  Supernaturally speaking, of course," she added with a slow, _slow_ smile.  She winked at him and started to count on her fingers.  "Shadow possession, creepy old man ghost possession, reasonably hot sex with a fairly powerful wizard, _really_ hot sex with me that time.  Honestly, it's like you've spread your legs for the supernatural and told them to come and get it."  
   
Jack choked on his tea.  "Thank you for that mental image," he said.  Lee covered his face and decided he was never looking at anyone again until his blush died down.  Which probably meant he was _never_ looking at anyone again.  
   
"Tony," Henry said.  His tone suggested that he was done dealing with silly children.  "Would you like me to attempt to speak with the ghost?  I might be able to suggest to him or her that they should leave."  
   
"Why would you be able to talk to it if Tony can't?" Amy asked.  Lee looked away and found Tony doing the same.  They shared a smile. One day, Henry was going to have to let Tony tell the others what he was.  
   
Henry shrugged one shoulder. "Ghosts appear to have an affinity for me."  
   
Tony's laugh was humourless.  "That's definitely one way of putting it," he said.  Lee was really going to have to get the story of the ghosts in Henry's apartment out of him at some point.  
   
Henry turned all his attention on Tony.  "Quite.  But would you like my help?"  
   
Tony slanted a glance at Lee.  He always seemed to think that Lee should have more of a problem with Henry's continued presence in their lives than he actually did. Hell, _everyone_ \- including sometimes Lee – thought that.  But the fact was that he didn't.  Henry was powerful, which was a good thing to have on their side, and Henry was important to Tony, which was all that mattered anyway.   
   
"Yeah," Lee said, "That'd be good.  Thanks."  
   


***

  
   
They left the others in Tim Horton's and Henry followed Lee and Tony back to their apartment. Tony was clearly antsy about having Henry in their home.  Lee wasn't sure why, Henry was being perfectly respectful of all their things and hadn't even turned his nose up too much at the mess, which… actually wasn't too bad, Lee realised.  He hadn't realised they'd unpacked that much of their stuff.  
   
"Did you tidy up before Henry came round?" Lee asked Tony quietly, nudging him into the kitchen while Henry ran his hands over the bookshelves in the living room.  Tony had been looking kind of possessive about their stuff.   
   
"What?" Tony asked.  "No.  When would I have had a chance?"  
   
Lee shrugged.  "I don't know.  Don't you think it looks tidier?"  
   
"Tony," Henry called from the living room before Tony could answer.  
   
Tony ducked under Lee's arm and made his way to the living room.  Lee followed him.  "Well," Henry said thoughtfully, "I don't think it's a ghost."  
   
"Right," Tony said slowly.  "It just plays one on TV?"  
   
"I'm no expert, but it doesn't feel like a restless spirit to me," Henry said, ignoring Tony.   
   
"What does it feel like?" Lee asked curiously.   
   
Henry tipped his head, surveying him.  "What does it feel like to you?" he asked, looking at Lee intently.  
   
It was impossible not to answer when Henry was looking into his eyes and asking him a direct question.  Lee didn't know if it was because of what Tony called his Prince of Man thing or his vampire thing.  He thought back to the times the maybe-not-a-ghost had touched him.  "It feels something like… solid?  Tangible."  
   
"And does it feel like your previous experience with ghosts?"  
   
"_Henry_," Tony said warningly.   
   
Lee waved him off.  "It's okay."  He tried never to think about being in the house, about walking down into the basement.  He hadn't wanted to, but something – Creighton Caulfield – had been calling him.  The wall had roiled under his hands, wispy fingers skimming down his sides.  It had felt so tenuous, so fragile and desperate to cling onto life.  Nothing like this, he realised, this already had life.  "No," he told Henry.  "Not like that."  
   
Henry nodded at him; it was almost a smile.  "Well, like I said, I'm no expert," he repeated, "But I think what you have here might be a boggart."  
   


***

  
   
"'A boggart'," Amy read out from her computer screen, her laptop propped up on their coffee table, "'is a malevolent household fairy which causes things to disappear', yadda yadda.  'In Northern England, there is the belief that the boggart should never be named', etcetera, 'it can not be reasoned with or persuaded and can become uncontrollable and destructive'.  Oh, wait, this bit sounds right, 'It is said that the boggart crawls into people's beds at night and puts a clammy hand on their face.  Sometimes he strips the bedsheets off them.  Hanging a horseshoe on the door of a house is said to keep a boggart away'."  She paused, rubbed her nose.  "I guess it's a bit late for that seeing as how you already _have_ one."  
   
"Are you getting that off of Wikipedia?" Jack asked, trying to crane his neck to see around her.  
   
Amy snapped her laptop lid down toward Jack's fingers.  "Shut up."  
   
"So what do we do?" Lee asked.  
   
"I guess we could-."  Tony trailed off, shrugging.  "Hang on."  He opened his own laptop and tapped at the keys, muttering, "Boggarts, boggarts," under his breath.  Eventually, his eyes stopped scanning down and he swore.  "Listen to this: 'boggarts, pixies, banshees and faun – peculiar, possibly mythological, creatures from your peculiar, possibly mythological, world. I've never seen one and you probably won't either.  Focus on the things that can kill you'.  Well, that's helpful."  
   
"At least it means they probably _can't_ kill you?" Amy ventured.  
   
"No, it means Arra was talking out of her ass.  Again."  Tony sighed and rubbed his hand across his face.  "Anyone know a metaphysical exterminator?"  
   
"An exterminator of the metaphysical," Amy corrected.  Tony must have been distracted because he didn't even react.  
   
Henry had been hanging back, standing in the kitchen doorway and letting them do their Scooby thing but now he stepped forward.  For a short guy, he could loom impressively when everyone else was sitting on the floor (hell, he could loom impressively anyway but Lee wasn't admitting to having been loomed by a guy seven inches shorter than him, even if that guy was less a guy and more a vampire).  
   
"Perhaps you could consider a trap," he suggested.  
   
Tony tipped his head back, looking up at Henry quizzically.  "A trap?" he asked.  
   
Henry shrugged.  "Perhaps," he said.  "Boggarts are essentially household pests, albeit supernatural ones.  If you can think of what may attract it and a suitable way to contain it, you should be able to trap it as easily as trapping a mouse." He glanced at the clock on the wall.  "Now if you'll excuse me, I've arranged to meet someone for dinner.  Unless you need me for anything else?"  
   
"Nah." Tony waved him away.  "Go eat. Enjoy."  
   
Henry's smile turned wicked. "I'm planning to. I intend to have Indian," he said.  
   
Startled by the joke, Lee couldn't help laughing.  Tony glared at him; Jack raised his eyebrows.  "What's funny?" he asked.  
   
Lee waved him off, turning to Tony while Henry made his exit.  "Trap?" he asked.  
   
Tony shrugged.  "It's worth a shot, I guess.  What attracts boggarts?"  
   
"Milk," Amy said.  When they all turned to look at her, she rolled her eyes and tapped her laptop screen.  "It says so right here.  A saucer of milk will calm a boggart, kind of like a cat."  
   
"Cats are lactose intolerant," Jack said then turned slowly scarlet when everyone stared at him.  
   
"Okay so," Amy said, rubbing her hands together.  "Milk?"  
   
Lee looked at Tony, Tony was already looking at Lee.  "I'll go buy some," Lee said, standing up.   
   
He grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair, listening to Amy's incensed, "_Men_. Seriously, who doesn't have milk in their fridge?" and Tony's, "We did have milk.  Once.  We drank it.  Or it went bad.  Or… something."  
   
Lee grinned to himself, grabbed his keys, and let himself out of the apartment.  He felt much better about the prospect of dealing with a boggart than he did about ghosts. He really hated ghosts.  
   


***

  
   
For nine p.m., the local grocery store was surprisingly crowded, especially since it was starting to sleet.  No one paid Lee any attention and he moved around to the dairy section quickly.  
   
Lee stood in front of the chiller cabinet for a few minutes, debating whole milk versus two per cent then he rolled his eyes at himself; their boggart probably wasn't worried about its arteries.   
   
He grabbed a carton of whole milk and headed to the checkout, stopping to pick up a bumper pack of kettle chips on the way - his personal trainer would just have to bitch; Lee was hungry.   
   
The checkout line was long and slow.  Lee slotted himself in behind two women who he recognised as living in his apartment building. One of their baskets was full of cat food, the other had eggs and flour and fruit and vegetables, things that could be used to prepare a meal from scratch.  He and Tony were going to have to work out a way to become friends with them, he decided.  
   
Lee was just working out his most charming introduction, something that would convey _hi, I'm not a creep, don't you want to feed me sometime?_, when his cell phone started to ring.  He jumped, not expecting it and just managed to fumble his phone out of his jeans pocket without dropping the milk or the chips.   
   
It was his mom.  "Hi, Mom," he said, hoping she wouldn't want to talk for long.  "What's up?"  
   
"That's what I'm calling you to find out," his mom told him.   "Tony just phoned to see if I was home so you could stay over for the night.  Just you, not him.  What's wrong, did you boys have a fight?"  
   
"Tony asked you what?" Lee asked, apparently too loud because the women in front turned around to look at him.  He smiled apologetically at them, but he didn't feel apologetic. God damn it, this damsel shit was old already.  He took a deep breath and tried to sound calm.  "No, Mom, we haven't had a fight." _Yet_, he thought darkly.  "We just have a b-," boggart, boggart, "bugs.  Cockroaches.  Tony's trying to be self sacrificing and get me to sleep somewhere else while he sprays the apartment."  That was even sort of true.  Except for all the details.  
   
"Oh that's nice," Lee's mom said warmly. "What a gentleman."  
   
"Yeah," Lee muttered.  Too much of a fucking gentleman, too much of a hero.    
   


***

  
   
"What the fuck?  You phoned my mother to get rid of me?" Lee demanded before the front door had finished fully closing behind him.   
   
"Um," Jack said, standing up.  "We might leave."  
   
"Yeah," Amy agreed, clutching her coat and laptop to her chest and following Jack.  "See you tomorrow, bye."  She stopped when she drew level with Lee, putting a hand on his arm.  "He did mean well," she whispered.  
   
Lee nodded; he knew that, that wasn't the problem.   
   
"I wasn't trying to get rid of you," Tony said, when Amy and Jack were gone.  "I just thought-.  There's no need for you to be here for this."  
   
"Bullshit.  You were trying to protect me again," Lee snapped.  He turned away and stared blindly out the window, rubbing his forehead.  It was starting to snow. "I thought we were past this."  
   
"Past me trying to protect you?" Tony asked, "Yeah, that's going to happen."  He came to stand behind Lee.  In the reflection on the window, Lee saw him reach out to touch Lee's shoulder then drop his hand.  "You were really freaked out last night," he said, waving his hand to indicate something that Lee was in no mood to decipher.  
   
Lee felt his skin crawl hot with embarrassment.  "That's when I thought it was a ghost," he said, folding his arms, "That's different."  
   
This time Tony did touch him, flattening his hand against the small of Lee's back.  He didn't say anything. The longer Lee stared at the snow, getting hypnotised dizzy from its swirling downward flurries, the less pissed off but the more determined he felt.  
   
"Ghosts are different," Lee repeated. "The house was…" He gave up. There were no words for what the house was. "I'm staying."  
   
Tony was quiet for so long that Lee was sure he was just thinking of the next level of his argument.  The only thing they ever really fought about was this, about Lee wanting to help and Tony wanting him to be safe.  "Fine," Tony said eventually.  
   
Lee blinked, surprised.  "Fine," he confirmed, surprised but relieved that this wasn't going to be a fight.  
   


***

  
   
Apparently the plan was that they'd put out a saucer of milk (or, well, a mug of milk; they didn't own saucers) and then Tony would set wards around it which would tell him when the boggart came for a drink.  After that, Lee was a little hazy on the details, but as long as it involved no more boggart, he was good with it.  
   
Tony also set wards around their bedroom door once they were inside, the same kind that he'd used to keep the ghosts out at Creighton Manor, only somehow adapted for boggarts.  
   
"It'll work," Tony told him, turning around from the door and wiping cherry cough syrup and spearmint toothpaste on his t-shirt.   
   
Lee sat down on the bed.  "Of course it will," he said, not sure which one of them he was trying to convince, "And if it doesn't, we'll try something else."  Tony looked like he wanted to argue that no, _this_ was what was going to work, but Lee patted the bed and Tony came over to him instead, sitting beside him.  
   
"I can't believe you thought I'd be okay with leaving you here," Lee told him, feeling suddenly serious.  "I'm _in this_," he added and hoped that Tony understood that he meant in everything, not just right now.

Tony looked at him for a long minute. The light was turned off and there was moonlight on his eyelashes and it made him look pale, ethereal.  Part of the plan was to pretend that they were going to bed like normal; they didn't know how sentient the boggart was, but it never hurt to make sure.  "I know," he said and just this once all the teasing and double entendre that he glided through life on was gone.  
   
Lee reached out for him, pressing his hand against Tony's cheek and holding him still for a slow, chaste kiss.  Tony responded with a gentle sigh.  Lee licked Tony's bottom lip, but otherwise kept his tongue to himself, content with short, soft, barely damp kisses.  
   
Tony pressed against Lee's shoulder and Lee braced himself with a hand on the comforter, encouraging Tony to lean more of his weight against him.  
   
Tony put his hand over Lee's, fingers cool on Lee's wrist.  "I am sorry about all this," he said sincerely.  
   
Lee shook his head.  "It's okay.  It's what I signed up for.  It's worth it," he added, speaking quietly like this was still a secret.  The _you're worth it_ was silent but Tony's smile told Lee that he'd heard it anyway.  
   
This kiss was less chaste, though still slow.  Lee rubbed Tony's arms, sliding his fingertips under Tony's sleeves, to stroke his shoulders. Tony put both hands against Lee's neck and rubbed his thumbs against the sensitive place behind Lee's ears.  
   
They didn't do this often, just sit quietly and kiss. Maybe they would when they'd been together longer, when the constant sparks between them were quieted by familiarity.  Lee curled his hand around the back of Tony's neck and pressed their foreheads together.  
   
It felt like being locked in their own little warded bubble, so safe in fact that, when the first crash sounded in the kitchen, it took them a second or two to react.   
   
Then, "What the fuck?" Tony asked, scrambling off the bed and to the door. Lee followed him to the sound of a second, more-metallic crash.  
   
"What's going on?" he asked, skidding into the kitchen behind Tony.  Tony's arm shot out, stopping Lee from going any further.  Lee looked over Tony's shoulder and saw that the unpacked boxes that had been sitting on the kitchen counter were now on the floor, their contents spilled out on the floor, not smashed, just spilled.  
   
"Huh," Lee managed.  
   
Tony turned to him.  He was rubbing the back of his neck, a frown between his eyebrows.  "Yeah."  He started to say something else then stopped when Lee pointed across the room.  
   
One by one, the set of expensive, dark dinner plates Henry had given them as a house-warming gift were floating up from the floor and slotting themselves into the plate rack above the stove.  Tony stepped back toward Lee, bumping together so that his back pressed against Lee's chest, his skin chilled even through his t-shirt.  "Right," he said, frowning, "No, seriously, what is it _doing_?"  
   
The last plate slotted into place and, after a second's pause, their three carving knives lifted off the ground.  Lee tried to push Tony back out of the way only to find Tony pushing him back at the same time.  Before they could fall over their feet or anything humiliating like that, the cutlery drawer rolled open and the knives lined up neatly inside it.  
   
"Can you stop this?" Lee asked, keeping his arm around Tony's waist in case Tony got any ideas about launching himself into the middle of things like he normally did.  
   
"Do I want to?" Tony asked, sounding distracted.  "I mean, it saves us doing it?"  
   
Startled, Lee laughed. "Yeah, okay," he said, "Point. But why is it putting our shit away? I thought boggarts were supposed to _wreck_ homes."

Tony shook his head. "Maybe ours is broken," he tried.  
   


***

  
   
It was probably cheating to let the boggart finish unpacking their kitchen before they tried to catch it but, really, if it _wanted_ to help.  After the final drawer slid closed, Lee switched his attention to the mug of milk.  
   
"Tony," he said softly, seeing the surface ripple, then, "Shit," because before he could blink, the milk was gone.  
   
"Fuck," Tony muttered, "_Fuck_ it's fast."   
   
"Can you get some more milk?" Lee asked.  Tony looked at him with raised eyebrows before understanding what he meant and calling the fridge door open and the milk carton straight into his hand.  Lee took it from him.  "It's okay," he said when Tony tried to grab it back.  He wasn't sure if he was talking to Tony or the invisible boggart, but he kept his tone gentle and his steps slow as he crossed the kitchen to the mug and slowly refilled it.  "It's okay."  
   
"Lee," Tony whispered but Lee stayed where he was, standing by the counter.  The boggart had been attracted to him from the start, maybe he could do something to lure it in now.  
   
Lee opened his mouth to explain, or maybe not because he didn't know if the boggart would be able to understand him, but before he could speak, a ripple flared across the milk.   
   
"Now," Lee hissed.  
   
Tony slammed his left hand out against the air, muttering a spell that was too fast for Lee to catch.  The mug flew across the room and slammed into the opposite cupboard, shattering into five pieces that clattered down onto the hardwood floor in a puddle of milk.   
   
"Fuck," Tony swore under his breath.  "Wrong way."  He brought his hand up slowly this time, extending his fingers and taking a breath.  The incantation when he repeated it was slow and commanding, his expression quiet and in control.  Lee shivered, or he tried to, he would have done, but the air felt thick, sticky like molasses against his skin, and he couldn't breathe.  
   
It was over in a second.  Tony dropped his hand, stumbling a little and supporting himself against the counter.  Lee reached out for him but Tony shook his head and tipped his chin towards the kitchen table.  
   
Something that Lee suspected was the boggart was sitting on the table, blinking slowly and looking confused.   
   
"What did you-?" Lee started to ask, not taking his eyes away from the boggart.  "Did you just stop time?"  No way did Tony have that much power, except that that was exactly what it had felt like.  
   
"Yeah," Tony said slowly.  "I guess I did.  Just for a second.  Cool, huh?"  
   
"Mmhmm," Lee agreed.  "What now?"   
   
The boggart had its head tipped to the side, looking at Tony warily before it darted toward Lee.  Lee took a step back and it stopped.  It was the size of a large kitten and its eyes were similarly cat-like, green and slitted.  It had worryingly human-like hands, which were long and thin, disproportionately large for its body.  Its nose twitched in Lee's direction and this time, when it moved toward him, he held still.  
   
"_Lee_," Tony said, half worry, half warning.   
   
Lee shook his head.  "I think it's okay."  He held out his hand and the boggart leapt for his arm, landing there with a strange, brittle kind of smoothness.  Now that Tony had slowed it down, it seemed much more harmless.  
   
It didn't really make any noise so much as it rumbled, a kind of not-quite purr that travelled down Lee's arm.  It spread one hand against Lee's chest for balance, thin, sharp fingers touching his collarbone.  
   
"What now?" Lee asked quietly.  The boggart looked at him.  "I was asking Tony," he told it.  
   
"I-." Tony hesitated.  "The plan was to catch it and… kill it, I guess."  
   
"Yeah," Lee agreed, "But we're changing the plan, right?"  The boggart was creepy and Lee missed sleep but it was clearly sentient and it hadn't hurt anyone, just freaked them out.  
   
Tony was silent for a minute. "Right," he said. Then, "You don't want to keep it, do you?"  
   
"No," Lee said quickly.  "No.  But can't we-.  Do you know anyone who needs a boggart?"  
   
Tony snorted.  "Not offhand," he said.  He held out a finger toward to the boggart, touching its back lightly.  It flapped its arms and jumped up onto Lee's shoulder, both hands going to Lee's hair for balance.  "Shit, sorry." Lee wasn't sure if Tony was apologising to the boggart or to Lee.   
   
Lee reached up and plucked the thing away from his head.  He needed that hair; James Taylor Grant couldn't suddenly develop a bald patch.  "How long is whatever you've done to it going to last?" he asked.  
   
Tony shrugged. "Um?  I'm not even totally sure what I've done.  I think I've just kind of slowed it down enough for us to be able to see it.  It'll probably wear off eventually."  
   
Not sure what else to do, Lee pulled the hand towel off the towel rack by the sink and wrapped it around the boggart.  He felt better when its hands were kind of swaddled.  It continued to watch him with its big, unblinking eyes while he carried it into the living room and sat on the sofa, letting the boggart rest awkwardly against his chest. When Lee had thought about maybe getting a cat, this hadn't been what he had in mind.  "We need a plan," he told Tony.  
   
Sitting next to him, Tony nodded. "We do, we-." His eyes went wide and he started to grin.  "And I think I have one."  
   


***

  
   
"Uh oh," Amy said when they came into her office the next morning.  "Bad night?"  
   
They'd gone to bed at four, the boggart had crawled in between them at quarter past and Tony's alarm had gone off at five.  "Eh," Tony said, holding up a hand in a 'middling' kind of gesture.  He sat down in Amy's chair, which she'd foolishly vacated and ignored her glare, dropping his head down onto the wood of her desk with a groan.  
   
Amy looked at Lee.  "What's up with him? Did you guys not make up?"

Had they been fighting? Oh yeah. Last night when Amy and Jack had left the apartment felt like a million years ago. "Were we fighting?" Lee asked guilelessly.

Amy rolled her eyes at him.  
   
Lee needed to get to make-up.  The bags under his eyes now had bags of their own and he hadn't had the time to shave yet today.  Instead, he held out his motorcycle helmet toward her.  "Boggart," he announced with just a little flicker of pride.  
   
"Holy shit," Amy swore, taking a step toward him and then another when nothing leapt out to bite her.  "Why've you brought it here?" She peered closer. "And why the hell is it wrapped in a pillowcase?"  
   
"It tidied away the towel?" Lee tried.  Tony laughed, the sounded vibrating through Amy's desk with a deep bass note.   
   
Amy looked at Lee then back at Tony, her eyebrows raised pointedly.  Her hair was jet black today with five perfectly sectioned purple streaks; it was kind of intimidating.  "We caught it," Lee told her and got a _no, shit?_ look for his trouble.  He almost missed the days when she'd treated him like part of the talent.  
   
"We're giving it to CB," Tony stepped in to save him.  He'd sat up and now he stood and came to stand with them.  He took the helmet from Lee, careful not to touch the boggart, which still did not react well to him.  It was asleep, or at least still, and Lee was hoping it would stay that way.  
   
"Wouldn't a poinsettia be easier?" Amy asked.  
   
"It likes to clean," Tony said, ignoring her as though she hadn't spoken.  
   
Amy snorted.   "You should definitely keep it then."  
   
"Funny," Tony told her.  "And we can't.  Seeing people sleeping freaks it out. It woke us up every time we managed to close our eyes last night and-.  What's funny?"  
   
"Nothing," Amy said, shaking her head and hiding her laugh behind her hand.  Her nails were black and purple to match her hair.  "Nothing, sorry.  It just sounds like you two got yourself a baby."  
   
Lee felt himself flush and when he glanced at Tony out the corner of his eye, Tony was doing the same.  "_Shut up_," Tony muttered.  "It's nothing like that.  It's more like-.  Like-."  
   
"Cockroaches," Lee supplied, thinking of the conversation with him mom last night.  He really needed to call her back.  
   
"Yes, that." Tony's smile was bright and grateful, so fucking gorgeous.  Lee forgot to look away until Amy cleared her throat.  "Like one fucking big cockroach that doesn't like to see people sleeping."  
   
Amy waved him on from his metaphor. (Simile?  Whatever.)  "Where does CB come into this?  Are you really anxious to get fired all of a sudden?"  
   
"It cleans," Lee told her because it was a good plan and because it had to work; they couldn't take the boggart home again and they couldn't, well, wouldn't kill it.  "The cleaning staff CB hired for this place are for shit."  
   
"That's because he doesn't pay them enough," Amy pointed out.  
   
Tony clicked his fingers at her.  "Exactly.  The boggart is free."  
   
"Yeah okay," Amy said, nodding and smiling slowly, "Lead with that and it might work."  
   


***

  
   
CB looked at them over the top of his steepled fingers.  Beside Lee, Tony shuffled his feet.  "If you name it, you should be able to get it to stay," Tony supplied helpfully.   
   
"And why exactly would I want it to stay, Mr Foster?" CB asked.  The boggart was awake now, sitting on CB's desk and looking around curiously.  Its movements were getting faster; Tony's spell must be wearing off some.   
   
Lee bumped his shoulder lightly against Tony's.  "Not you personally," Lee told him, "but the studio.  It likes to clean and it's real fast."  They'd led with the cost aspect but there was no harm repeating it.  "And it's free."  
   
"Yes, Mr Nicholas, so you've mentioned," CB told him sardonically.  He looked at the boggart closely. It stared back.  Lee bit his lip and refused to let out an inappropriate laugh in response to the staring contest.  Eventually, CB sat back.  "All right.  I'm willing to agree to this experiment. For a trial period."  
   
"That's great," Tony said quickly.  He coughed and shifted his feet again.  "I mean, that's really good, CB.  You won't regret it."   
   
"Hmph," CB said.  
   
"You just need to, uh, name it," Tony added.  
   
CB just lifted his eyes and looked at them both.  "And do you need to be present for this touching ceremony?"  
   
"What?  Oh, no."  Tony backed up.  "No, I guess we don't.  Thanks again.  Bye, boggart."  
   
The boggart flicked its eyes from CB to Lee then back again.  Apparently CB was way more interesting than Lee.  Lee couldn't say he wasn't relieved.  "Yeah, bye," Lee said and followed Tony out of the room.  
   
Out in the corridor, Lee was just in time to catch Tony pumping his fist into the air.  He turned to Lee, laughing, and caught his hand, pulling him close.  "Score," Tony told him.  "Didn't I tell you that was the best plan ever?"  
   
"I think you said cheesy crusts on pizza were the _best_ plan ever," Lee teased but Tony wouldn't rise to the bait, just shook his head and laughed again.  He brushed his mouth against Lee's then dragged his lips to Lee's ear.   
   
Lee shivered and tried to forget exactly how much public they would be in if anyone came into CB's outer office right then.  "We've got our apartment to ourselves," Tony whispered in Lee's ear.  "Do you know what the first thing we're going to do tonight is?"  
   
"Sleep?" Lee asked innocently.  
   
Tony stopped, pulling back a little.  "Actually, yeah," he said, looking appalled at the words coming out of his mouth.  "But _after_ that?"  
   
Lee grinned and stole a kiss of his own.  "I think I'm looking forward to finding out," he said.   
   
Tony's grin turned into a leer – not a very successful one, but the thought definitely counted.  "Oh you will-."  He jumped suddenly, hand flying to his ear, a sign that Adam or Peter was yelling over his radio.  "Fuck, okay, I've got to go." Tony kissed Lee again then spun away.  "I'll see you on set."  
   
Lee waved him off and watched him go, then headed towards make-up, checking his watch as he went.  Ten hours until they'd both be able to go home; he was definitely looking forward to it. 


End file.
